Ghastly flies buzzing around over every piece of food that is lying around? Spiders making their palaces on hinges of your ration cupboard doors? Join me — in my teeth gritting irritation!

I was- well for a lack of a better word “bugged”.I came back from a long vacation and opened my ration cupboard to find that an extended family of spiders had taken roost and claimed all the corners – the entire lot of cousins and uncles and aunts! Enough was enough! I mean you just look away for a few minutes and they come prancing in, ready to take over without paying any rent?!

I went on a savage google and pinterest hunt! Every single site suggested this trick – peppermint essential oil! Each site had their own version, so I made a hotchpotch of all and came up with my own recipe.

I ordered the peppermint essential oil online, to be delivered within 24 hours. Them spiders were not going to stay in my cupboard longer than I could help it! I got a spray bottle, made the lethal concoction and went psycho with the mixture.

peppermint essential oil with water

Now I am writing this after a month of having sprayed the brew, and my hinges stay unoccupied and shelves devoid of spider debris (they create filth!) Its sheer pleasure to open a cupboard, peek into its — and not get gluey spiders’ web stuck on your nose and ears, leaving you with a feeling that the spiders are crawling around somewhere inside your clothes. UGH!!

My other ugh! is the common house fly. Bloody things are found hovering around every place you can rest your eyes on! Try eating a meal without inviting them? They get offended and land on every morsel about to go into your mouth, and then quench their thirst in your glass of water. I’ve had a few who thought they could swim in my class of cocktail, and then fly away feeling mighty pleased and tipsy!

Ewwww! Right?

Last night I was having a party at home. It is heavy, pelting rainy, season, we held the do indoors and had the bar set up under an awning outside our door near the car park. At 10 am, when I went to check the layout, I almost screamed blue murder! Flies – hordes of flies – gossiping in corners, flying around courting their mates! And this was to be a bar – with sugar syrup, and other nectarous medley of ingredients. Party time for flies. I was about to sit down with my head weighing heavy on my hands when “google” came up in my mind’s eye.

natural organic fly repellent

I was doing a jig in the evening when I went to get a drink! Not a fly- NOT ONE! All it took was a lemon and some cloves.

These hacks are all repellents and not killers. The smell of peppermint drives the spider batty and the cloves make the flies dizzy.Go forth and squash them gnats!

Meet the Author

For the 21 years and some months that I have been alive, there has been this crazy, eccentric, always-charged-up woman with a full-time job of being a mother to 6 (2 children, 4 dogs). In her spare time she blasts music on her DJ console, reads like a maniac, downloads shows (because God forbid she runs out of something to watch), runs an entire household, and to top it all off, manages a very successful catering business which makes the most delicious food in the entire world. Once you have her food, everything else will taste like stale socks. This is what you call "Maa ke haath ka khana".